


heard them calling in the distance

by Muir_Wolf



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Future Fic, Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:32:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2807720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy/Clarke/Raven; future fic.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>There is a gun strapped to her leg and a flashlight in her other hand. There is one of Clarke’s maps tucked into her pocket.  And there are Clarke and Bellamy, somewhere in the darkness around her, as grounded as she is, as flightless as she is. But not as safe.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	heard them calling in the distance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cartographies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographies/gifts).



> (this fic is side-stepping the fallout of certain events in the mid-season finale, as this was mostly written before that episode.)

__

__

 

_Some had scars and some had scratches_  
 _It made me wonder about their past_  
 _And as I looked around I began to notice_  
 _That we were nothing like the rest_

__

__

 

Raven leans against the tree behind her, her palm pressing against the rough bark. Her good leg and her right thigh are aching, and she tilts her head back until she’s looking up through the branches, up to the dark, dark sky where she used to live.

She breathes in. She breathes out.

Her hand is fisted against her thigh, and slowly she eases her fingers open. There is a gun strapped to her leg and a flashlight in her other hand. There is one of Clarke’s maps tucked into her pocket.

And there are Clarke and Bellamy, somewhere in the darkness around her, as grounded as she is, as flightless as she is. But not as safe.

She counts back from three, and then pushes away from the tree. They might have a treaty with Lexa’s people, but they aren’t all that goes bump in the night. Mountain Men took Clarke, and Bellamy never would let her go without a fight. Not that Raven would’ve, either, but brace or no brace, she doesn’t move as fast as she used to. She swallows that down, because it’s no use feeling sorry for herself, no use reliving those heart-in-her-throat moments of watching Clarke grabbed in the smoke, watching Bellamy throw himself at their attackers and go down, too. No use, no use, no use.

She has a choice. Had a choice, but she already made it. The joint attack against Mount Weather—the one that Clarke and Abby and Lexa and Indra and Bellamy and Kane and Raven herself had gone round and around on, had argued out, had mapped and mapped out until Raven’s hands were covered in paper cuts instead of engine grease—it’s happening in hours. Clarke—Princess of the Sky People, Clarke—had become their envoy the same way Raven’s watched her fall into every other position of leadership. Raven wouldn’t have pegged her as much of a diplomat, but she’s getting better, and Lexa appreciates the lack of bullshit. But Clarke is supposed to be there.

There’s been too much blood to get them to this point, and there’s too many of their people still inside that mountain to wait any longer. If Raven went back to Alpha and got help—

If Raven went back to Alpha and got help, the attack would be delayed. Oh Mel and Monroe would help, Wick would help, Octavia and Lincoln would help: Raven still has friends. But Raven isn’t invisible, and Kane or Abby would see, and Abby would want to send a full rescue mission, and Lexa’s trust might be shaken, and they have built this attack on a pile of snow that’s just waiting to avalanche and take everything tumbling down with it.

And they have all bled too much to let that happen.

So Raven is going alone.

__

 

Clarke’s hands are bound behind her back. Her legs are tied as well, and she’s sitting in the dark in a room that is small enough that she cannot fully lie down. She knows she’s in Mount Weather only because the Mountain Men took her—she hasn’t seen anything since the light—muffled by the smoke—filtering through the tree branches as they knocked her down. She can feel the blood drying near her ear, feel the way it itches in that specific way drying blood has of itching—a sensation she’s become more familiar with than she’d like.

She focuses on the fact that she’s in Mount Weather, and not the fact that she doesn’t know if Bellamy and Raven got away safely, because she can’t quite bear, at this moment in the dark, believing anything else.

She wishes she knew the time, knew how long she was out, how much longer she has until the attack is supposed to start. Lexa and her mom will start it without her. Bellamy and Raven will convince them they have to, and maybe Clarke can get free somehow and help from the inside, maybe—

She flexes her hands, and ignores the way that her legs have long since fallen asleep, and that every time she moves them pins and needles shoot up their lengths. She’s been captured, not killed, so sooner or later somebody’s going to want to talk to her. All she needs is an opening. All she has is time.

__

 

Bellamy wakes up to Monty’s hands on his face.

“Bellamy,” he’s saying, his voice low but urgent, and Bellamy looks up at him with sheer confusion for a moment, trying to place where and when he is. After a moment it clicks, and he remembers Clarke saying that Monty was still alive. It’s a warmer reception that he was expecting, considering how long it’s been since Monty’s seen him (and how much of a dick Bellamy knows he was the majority of time Monty knew him). After a moment, the relief on Monty’s face feels more alarming than anything else.

“Where are we?” Bellamy asks. He goes to sit up, but Monty’s hand presses down on his chest, holding him down, and as soon as Bellamy moves he’s grateful for it: his head swims.

“Not anywhere we want to be,” Monty says. He moves back slightly, and Bellamy can see behind him—and he swallows thickly. The accommodations are nicer than Clarke described—possibly to ease any guilty consciences—but they’re clearly in the same sort of room that Clarke rescued Anya from. The room is divided in half by a barred door. On their side, what’s left of the 100 are sitting on cots, most of them pretending not to watch him. There’s more than enough cots for all of them, but they’re sitting two or more to a bed, huddled close together and surrounding Bellamy, who they have in the back corner of the room. They’re thin, their skin paler than Bellamy remembers. On the other side of the barred door, two of them (Bellamy squints, he thinks it’s Thomas and Donya) are strapped down to tables, an IV running from their arms up through the wall.

Bellamy’s hand reaches up and covers Monty’s as he pushes himself up to a sitting position, head swimming or no. He leans his back against the wall, barely aware that his hand is still gripping Monty’s tightly.

“Those son of a bitches really did it,” he growls out, his voice barely above a whisper, but still carrying.

Monty’s eyes widen. “You know. You _know._ Have you seen Clarke? Do you know what happened to her?”

The eyes that were pretending not to watch him aren’t pretending anymore, everyone drawn to the sound of Clarke’s name falling off Monty’s lips. Bellamy’d laugh if he didn’t understand the feeling first hand. 

“She kept snooping until she found where they were draining the Grounders. Anya was one of them, and Clarke let her out. They gave chase, and the only way for her to not get killed was to run. But she’s been trying to get you out ever since she left.”

Monty nods jerkily, and Bellamy looks down between their bodies, where his hand is still pressed tight against Monty’s. He squeezes, once, and then lets go. 

“I knew she wouldn’t have left us unless she had to,” Monty says.

“I’m just glad princess isn’t dead,” Miller says. He’s sitting on the cot next to him, dark circles underneath his eyes. Bellamy meets his eyes squarely, and doesn’t think about watching Clarke fall through the smoke only yards in front of him, doesn’t wonder why neither she nor Raven are here with him.

“Not yet,” he says. “Not yet.”

__

 

Raven checks her watch again, and bites back a curse. She knows there’s no way for her to break in, free Clarke and Bellamy, get them out, and get back in time to meet up with Lexa and Abby. Her best bet for saving them is getting behind enemy lines and waiting for the attack to start. Lexa and Abby might start with a missing Clarke, but with a captured Clarke? With Lexa wondering if she rolled, with Abby worrying if she’s already dead? Raven’s fingertips brush against the gun at her thigh, the metal reassuring. She knows she’s doing the only thing she can.

She’d followed Clarke’s maps to the mountain, but now she’s more in her element. Only a couple hours now, but that’s long enough to build something that can go boom.

Long enough for her, anyway.

Half the night following them up here, fingers tracing over Clarke’s pen lines, and it shouldn’t feel so wrong not having them at her side, at her back, but it does. Raven’s not one for leaning on people, but she’s spent the last few hours missing half-smiles and hands brushing against hers. She’s exhausted and bordering on furious and unwilling to let any fear seep in around that fury, because she is going to get what’s hers back, no matter what.

She’s going to get them back.

__

 

President Wallace opens the door. 

Clarke thinks it’s been hours, but maybe it’s just been minutes, maybe time is just stretching out around her here in the darkness.

“It didn’t have to be this way, Clarke,” he says. She’s bound and tied, but she isn’t gagged, and her lip curls.

“What have you done to my people?” she asks. _Mine, mine, mine,_ she thinks, and she wonders when she started claiming everything that mattered to her, started bleeding over everything that’s hers.

“What I had to do to save mine,” Wallace says. It’s the sort of double talk she’s used to hearing repeated by her parents after council meetings. It says nothing, and everything, and if she had a hand free she is sure at that moment that she’d go for his throat just to shut him up.

“You think you’re so civilized,” she says. “Here in your cave, hiding away. You’re the real savages.” He’s backlit by the light in the hallway, so she can’t make out his face, can’t see if his expression changes. He lifts a hand, but she can’t tell if it’s in resignation or anger, but it doesn’t really matter anymore. “Why am I here?”

“Blood must have blood, Clarke,” he says. His voice is steady, and she hates him for it—hates him for all of it. Hates him for the way he takes words that mean _justice at all costs_ and turns them into something that means _you will die so I can live._

She pictures Lexa and her mom and Kane leading Ark survivors and Grounders into battle, and meets Wallace’s eyes, trying for serene. “Blood must have blood,” she agrees.

__

 

Bellamy wants to tell Monty and Miller about the planned attack, but he’s unwilling to give any hope when he can’t be certain it won’t be snatched away once more. He believes that Abby and Lexa will attack anyway, but—

Besides, who knows who might be listening.

Monty’s watching him, like he expects Bellamy to have some ace up his sleeve, but Bellamy stays quiet for once—listens, instead, to what’s been done to the 100 under President Wallace’s orders. They’ve lost five people through the bone marrow transplants, but in the meantime—as they’re picked off one by one—they’re being drained, just like the Grounders were. Waste not, want not.

__

 

Raven times her explosion to the rest of the explosions that she set up days ago, hope clogging her throat as she waits to see if Lexa and Abby went through with it. If they didn’t—if they didn’t, there’ll be no cover for this one, and Raven knows she’ll be captured, same as Bellamy and Clarke. If they didn’t, Alpha camp might never find out what happened to the three of them—whether it was Mountain Men, a different group of Grounders, treachery, or even the Earth itself. Raven believes, because she has to. She doesn’t have any other options left.

She’s behind the tree line as she watches the seconds tick away on her watch, and when it finally goes off she can feel the reverberation in her bones—but there’s other explosions in the distance, and hers, relatively small, is muffled in comparison. Dust rises in the distance, and Raven stands, her gun finally in her hand, and moves to the passage she’s revealed.

(Clarke told her that the radiation would kill the Mountain Men. Raven knows, but she can’t bring herself to care, not when they took and kept so many of the 100; not when they took Bellamy and Clarke.)

The grounders and the Ark survivors (the Sky people, she thinks, and thinks it’s a fitting moniker, because she has walked the sky and been cast out by the sky, and some days she thinks she understands how Icarus must have felt) are attacking the gate. Raven’s explosions took out the tower, so Mount Weather’s communications are out, and she also took out all of the cameras that their scouting revealed the past few weeks.

She has a window. It’ll have to be enough.

__

 

Clarke has one wrist free when she hears the explosion. Her skin is torn, blood seeping out, and she thinks she might’ve dislocated her wrist for a moment, but her heart is frantic as she hears footsteps running in the distance. This is her fight, too, and she’s not going to spend it locked in a closet while people she loves are fighting and dying on the same mountain.

Despite the flitting panic, she keeps herself steady as she works, and finally she gets her second hand free. From there it’s only minutes until she unbinds her ankles, and moves toward the door. It’s locked, but Raven showed her how to pick locks ages ago, and she pulls off her shoe and grabs the metal pins hidden in the tongue that Raven had insisted she put there.

Before she can get it, though, the door swings open, and President Wallace is looking down at her. She pauses a moment, and then shoves herself up off her knees, wincing as the pins and needles flare up all across her legs. He opens his mouth to speak, but she yanks him into the room, throwing him back against the wall as hard as she can. He cracks his head, and drops down, and she kneels back in front of him.

“Should’ve realized…” he says weakly.

“Realized what? Why were you getting me?”

“You’re quite the bargaining chip, Princess of the Sky People,” Wallace says, smiling without amusement. His hand brushes against his head and comes away reddish-brown in the dim light. “Should’ve known you’d get free.”

“Where are my people,” Clarke growls, her hand at his throat.

“I didn’t want to hurt any of you,” Wallace says.

“Tell me where they are, or I’ll make sure you never hurt _anybody_ ever again,” she says, leaning her weight against his throat. His hand covers hers, smearing his reddish-brown blood across her skin, but he gives her the directions.

She leaves him locked inside. Maybe she should finish it, she thinks, but she can’t stand the thought of anymore blood on her hands right now, and all she really wants is to find what’s hers.

__

 

Bellamy moves to the bars as soon as soon as they hear the explosion. Miller and Monty are only a step behind them, and the three of them pace the bars, trying to figure a way out of them. Miller and Monty have had longer to examine them, though—they’ve tested them for every weakness, and always come up short.

Bellamy swears, shaking the bars as hard as he can, as if he can shatter them with sheer brute force—but somewhere in this mountain, Clarke’s still separated from the rest of them, and somewhere nearby Raven and Octavia and the rest of the Ark are fighting, and he’ll be damned if he sits behind bars for the duration.

As if conjured by his thoughts, Clarke slams open the door on the far side and skids into the room, her horrified eyes turning from the two teenagers strapped to the tables on her side, to Bellamy, Monty, and the rest behind the bars. 

“Bellamy!” she says, shocked, half-tripping towards him, and it’s then that he sees the blood staining her wrists, the awkward way she’s walking. “What are you doing here? Where’s Raven?”

“Raven got away,” Bellamy says. “Can you get us out of here?”

The staff have gotten smarter—this time there’s no handy key to break them out, like there was with Anya. Clarke frees the teens on her side, but the bars open electronically, so she can’t pick the lock, and frustration is threatening to swallow her whole when the door opens a second time.

“Raven?” she asks, because hour of need or no, the gods have never taken to smiling down on them before, but then Raven is in Clarke’s arms, real and whole and flesh and blood. Clarke buries her face in the crook of Raven’s neck for a moment, just breathing, breathing, breathing, and then she pulls back. “Can you get the door open?” she asks.

Raven scoffs a _yeah._

Bellamy’s hands find both Raven and Clarke’s arms for a moment, assuring himself that they’re okay, and then the three of them lead what’s left of the 100 out of the mountain to freedom.

__

 

They head back to Raven’s tent when Abby lets them leave medical. Bellamy has another set of stitches to add to his collection, and Clarke is sporting rope burns and a swollen wrist. Raven takes her good hand and tugs her along, and Bellamy follows behind them. She tells them she wants to talk over what happened— _“They’re going to want an official report, but before they do…”_ — but she only just got them back, and she doesn’t want to let them out of her sight quite yet. Bellamy bumps into them from behind, following too closely, and Clarke’s hand is warm in hers, and she thinks that maybe she isn’t the only one.

Inside Raven’s tent, the three of them sit down on the cot, Clarke sandwiched between the other two. Bellamy lifts her free hand and examines her injured wrist, his touch gentle. A muscle in his jaw tightens.

“Why did they keep you separate?” he asks. “Did they do anything to you?”

“No!” Clarke says. “No, I think they were going to ask me about the camp and the Ark, but they didn’t have time.”

“C’mon Bellamy,” Raven says. “You know why they kept her separate. Same reason they would’ve kept you separate if you they knew who you were. Couldn’t let the prisoners start to hope.”

“And who am I?” Bellamy asks, looking past Clarke to meet Raven’s steady gaze.

She laughs. “Hell if I know,” she says. “Co-Leader with Clarke? Whatever you are, even with the Ark down here, people look to both of you.” She nudges Clarke’s shoulder with her own. “Even Princess’ mom knows it.”

“I’m just—” Clarke says, but stutters on the words, because all her circling thoughts can return to is _trying to keep my people safe._

“Thanks for getting us out of there,” Bellamy says into the stretching silence. Raven’s lips tug up into a familiar crooked smile.

“Well I couldn’t just leave you there, could I?” she says. She realizes, distantly, that she still hasn’t released Clarke’s hand, but she doesn’t want to. Instead, she leans again into Clarke’s side, letting their arms press against each other. “Who else is going to ask me to blow up bridges and the sides of mountains?”

Bellamy smiles, his thumb rubbing softly across the top of Clarke’s wrist. “As if you’ve ever needed asking,” he says. Clarke laughs, squeezing Raven’s hand, and then shakes her head.

“I thought I was alone in there,” she says, the words tumbling out of her mouth in their hurry to escape. “I thought—I thought maybe you two would convince Lexa and mom to still attack, but I thought—”

“Hey,” Raven says. “You’re never alone. You’re stuck with us. Hell or high water.”

“You make it sound so appealing,” Bellamy smirks.

“Ride or die,” Raven says, an answering smile starting on her own face.

“Til death do us part?” Clarke asks, before she can think better of it. A beat of silence follows her words. “I mean—”

“Are you proposing?” Raven asks, leaning her chin on Clarke’s shoulder. 

“It did sound like a proposal,” Bellamy says, trying to match Raven’s light, teasing tone. Trying to ignore the way they’re all tangled up in each other, the way that they always are. Trying to ignore what he knows she didn’t mean.

But Clarke’s tired and sore, and only ever feels safe anymore when she’s with the two of them. She’s spent the last however many hours biting back the _mine_ that keeps wanting to spill from her lips, and maybe she doesn’t want to do it anymore.

“You both could do worse,” she says, instead of the _you’re mine_ that bumps against the back of her teeth in its eagerness. Raven’s already looking at her, but at that, at her tone of voice, she sits back a little, looking at Clarke with new eyes.

“You’re not joking,” Raven says. Clarke shrugs a little helplessly, but Raven still hasn’t let her go all this while. Raven’s eyes slide past to look at Bellamy, but he’s watching it all play out with intent eyes, and she’s slept with him before, hasn’t she? She know what he looks like when he’s turned on, and she’s seen him watch Clarke often enough—she knows what he looks like when he’s falling in love. But he’s looking at both of them, now, with the same open, almost desperate look in his eyes.

Raven leans forward first, because someone has to, and she’ll be damned if she ever lets anyone else slip through her fingers.

Clarke meets her lips with her own, Raven’s hand cupping Clarke’s cheek. Bellamy’s free hand slides across Clarke’s knees until it settles on Raven’s thigh, linking the three of them together, and Raven breathes out a sigh against Clarke’s lips, nudges her nose against Clarke’s, and keeps kissing her.

They pull apart after a moment, and Bellamy leans in as Raven leans out, letting go of Clarke’s wrist so he can tangle his hand in her hair as he kisses her, and Raven hums as she watches them. Bellamy kisses like he argues with her—passionate but willing to yield, the both of them moving with each other before they realize they’ve even begun.

Clarke’s smiling as they pull back, something loosed in her chest. She pulls in a full, deep breath for the first time in what feels like forever, and her shoulders lower with relief. Bellamy and Raven are still watching her with painfully fond eyes, and she ducks her head a little. “ _Mine,_ ” she says, soft, soft, soft, looking back up at them, and they exchange a glance before Bellamy leans forward and skims his nose against Raven’s cheek, his hand dropping from Clarke’s hair to slide against her back.

“Princesses,” Raven says against Bellamy’s mouth, “always so damn _greedy_.”

Clarke lets out a startled laugh, and Bellamy’s grinning as he chases Raven’s mouth and presses another kiss to her lips.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Clarke hums, enjoying the view, and Bellamy and Raven break apart to share an eyeroll, before mutually turning towards Clarke and pressing her back against the bed. She shrieks. “What are you—”

“Could be injured,” Raven says.

“We’d better check you over,” Bellamy says.

“Best to be thorough,” Raven says.

Clarke laughs and kisses them both, whatever leader she’s stretched herself to be dissolving in the space they’ve carved out in the circle between them. Here they’re just Clarke, and Bellamy, and Raven, and she can feel their heartbeats in time with her own, can hear the pattern of the beats like words beneath her skin: _home, home, home, home, home._

__

__


End file.
